Conventionally, as vehicle-mounted equipment mounted in a vehicle, car navigation apparatuses, car audio apparatuses, facility information searching apparatuses, etc. are known. Makers of such vehicle-mounted equipment cannot make map data, music data, facility data, etc. be shared among pieces of vehicle-mounted equipment even if they are of the same type in a case in which their destinations differ, for example, some of them are destined for Europe and others are destined for the U.S. Therefore, after makers of vehicle-mounted equipment install, into each vehicle-mounted equipment, map data, music data, facility data, etc. which are suited to the destination of each vehicle-mounted equipment, they ship each vehicle-mounted equipment.
Patent reference 1 discloses, as a related technology, a car navigation system which, using a small amount of data, can perform navigation which is suitable for both a vehicle in which the car navigation system is mounted and an environment where the vehicle is used. This car navigation system is provided with a processing program for implementing navigation functions, a vehicle information acquiring means for acquiring vehicle information which the vehicle holds, a setting information generating means for generating setting information which is to be set up for the processing program on the basis of the vehicle information acquired by the vehicle information acquiring means, a setting information notifying means for notifying the setting information generated by the setting information generating means to the processing program, and a setting information changing means included in the processing program, for changing the settings of the processing program according to the setting information notified from the setting information notifying means, and the processing program carries out a process of implementing the navigation functions with the settings changed by the setting information changing means.    [Patent reference 1] JP,2005-181130,A
A problem with above-mentioned conventional vehicle-mounted equipment is that changing of the type of vehicle-mounted equipment for each destination, i.e., according to map data or the like which are installed in the vehicle-mounted equipment causes an increase in the number of types of the product and therefore this results in complication of the manufacturing control of the vehicle-mounted equipment. A further problem is that when pieces of vehicle-mounted equipment shipped from the maker of the pieces of vehicle-mounted equipment are mounted to cars in the carmaker of the cars, respectively, if the volume of sales of cars for each destination is not in agreement with the amount of order (shipment) of the vehicle-mounted equipment for the destination, it is difficult to carry out stock control because an excess or a deficiency of the stock of cars occurs in the carmaker.
It can be considered that in order to solve these problems, map data for a plurality of destinations, etc. are installed into each vehicle-mounted equipment and each vehicle-mounted equipment is then shipped. In this case, there is a possibility that when a user starts his or her vehicle-mounted equipment, a license fee or the like is charged also for map data or the like which the user does not use, and therefore there is a possibility that the user is forced to pay out unnecessary money.
The present invention is made in order to solve the above-mentioned problems, and it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide vehicle-mounted equipment which can be suited for any of a plurality of destinations without putting any load on the maker of the vehicle-mounted equipment, the carmaker of a vehicle in which the vehicle-mounted equipment is to be mounted, and the user of the vehicle-mounted equipment.